The only good car France ever produced where those Citroens which moved silently through the night, their headlights throwing pools of dirty yellow before them as they pierced the fog hiding their movements from the Gestapo as they delivered downed Allied fliers to a new safe house. They didn't run worth crap, but they sure were romantic.

Deux Cheveaux... you mean the French VW without the German engineering? Shut one door and the other falls off? Off course. the Folks Wagon did well for regular folks and so did the Deux Cheveaux but ya couldn't kill a VW with a stick.

Have I mentioned that I went to the range last night and practiced shooting the .357 left handed? Did pretty well, too, out to 50 meters (yes, meters). Gotta practice left-handed more, just for grits and shins.

This came to me and I post it in memory of gnu. I mean, I dedicate it to him.

Oh, this is about the norm over here...

When we got to Kabul International Airport (that was strictly used by military and contractor personnel), enroute to Kandahar on a C-17 military cargo plane to get our posting assignments, the folks running airport screening (whatever country's military that was on duty that day) made about 100 of us U.S. Soldiers go through the same screening that the TSA gives. Keep in mind that we are coming INTO theater, which means that we had our armored vests, helmets, weapons WITH ammo, FULL magazines, and bags of yet more combat equipment.

They told us that we would have to remove all of our gear, shoes, belts, and empty our pockets (placing contents into the little Tupperware dish) and place it on the X-ray conveyor to be x-rayed, weapons and all. As an MP, I have an M4 assault rifle, and a Beretta M9 pistol. Of course, being as sarcastic as I am, I couldn't help but say to the guys running the X-ray, "There are a couple items in there that MIGHT look JUST LIKE a couple of guns, just sayin'." They gave me dumb looks. Having taken my boots, dog tags, and belt off, I was giving myself a once over pocket check, to make sure that I didn't forget anything. I found a loose rifle round in my pocket (that I had found on the ground outside), crap! So I quickly threw it in my helmet that was still exposed on the conveyor, because the little dish had already made it in to the machine. I walked through the metal detector without incident, and came out the other side. The X-ray clowns were staring intently at the screen, like bomb dogs looking for that faint whiff of hydrocarbons. All of my gear, 2 weapons, 14 magazines fully loaded with 5.56mm ammo, and 3 pistol mags loaded with 9mm ammo comes out on the other end of the box, having been THOROUGHLY scrutinized. One of the clowns reaches into my helmet, pulls that loose round out, holds it up like a 5 year old on an Easter egg hunt that found the Golden Egg, and loudly proclaims "AH HA!!!" I snatched it out of his hand and asked him if he missed the other 465 in the magazines. I gathered my belongings and got as far away from those clowns as I could, as I tried to put my boots on while walking.

When we were all finally though the security station, and in the sterile & secure room to await boarding, there was talk of those clowns trying to take the pocket knives of some of the soldiers. What did they think we were going to do, take over a U.S. Military plane?? We ARE the U. S. Military, damn fools!!!

I am shocked and disgusted by your specist remarks, Amos! Respect does not have to be earned, because it is correct human conduct to proffer initial respect to ALL others automatically as a precondition to establishing good relations with them. Mutual respect upon first acquaintance is a necessary corollary to proper conduct, agreed? Respect does, however, have to be maintained following that initial meeting....and that's where our behaviour enters into the equation.

Your implying that Chongo is unclean and has other undesirable personal characteristics is rank specism of the sort that will not be tolerated any longer in this society. I bet you even use the "PF" phrase, don't you?

Welllll, it just seems to me that a 22lr rifle at 20m isn't "fun" on the range. It's a good field zero depending on the cover and the target. Of course, I haven't even fired a gun in years and I don't recall the ballistics.

My nickname used to be Dead Eye but now I have a dead eye.

BTW, do you close the "other" eye when you sight with open sights? or assisted sights? My bro used to sight with both eyes open with his shotgun and although he was a master on the skeet and trap ranges I outshot him in the woods. Of course, his custom made Browning (range gun) worth THOUSANDS of dollars might have held him back against my $300, second hand Baikal... them Ruskies know how to build a shotgun for field.

Well, I suppose at some theoretical virgin introduction, you might be right, LH--but we know Chongo all too well, having been assailed with his misadventures and misdeeds lo these many K!! And under those circumstances, my remarks are germane, accurate, and much to the point!!

I just wanted to get the aim point. Now that I have I can use it like I use my other "fun" guns: shooting at empty plastic bottles, rotating targets, doing drive-bys, possibly hunting rabbits, stuff like that.

Now, on the other hand, my Kimber of Oregon Model 82 single shot 22 LR target rifle, sights set up like in the photo (we are talking Olympic grade here, dude!) I use for what it was intended: targets, out to 200 meters, using Eley-primed target ammunition such as, well, Eley.

The AR-7 (that is, Henry's version, the "US Survival Rifle") is something for when my plane goes down in the Northern Ontario boglands, so I have something with which to shoot the mosquitoes and thereby have something to eat.

Of course, I also have the .22 LR Marlin Model 7N (7 shot magazine, bolt action), with the scope zeroed to 35 yards. That's another nice gun for rabbits and other small game.

Please note that not a single one of these is a "tactical twenty-two." I gave up on spray-'n'-pray a long time ago -- about the time I had to buy my OWN ammunition instead of having my rich Uncle Sam provide it.

Fine, Amos. Fine. But Chongo has asked me to tell you that his initial respect for you has now dwindled to about the dimensions of a flyspeck on a hot griddle... Virtually nonexistent, in other words. On a respect scale of 1 to 10 he rates you at about 0.00525

My goodness; I have enough to do trying to impress you and Rap and Stilly and Gnu without worrying about what an imaginary animal fancies as his opinion; it is pretty well established that Chongo has to work overtime just to make a simple declarative sentence, let alone a genuine opinion worth noticing. I am NOT worried about what your thought-balloon thinks it thinks about its second-removed impression of me received by way of receiving your impressions from your video screen of my typing. It really does not matter whatsoever.

Oh fare the well, my good friends all, Who live outside the law I am bound across the border wild To let an American-educated handsome young Mexican dentist poke a hole in my jaw.

The exciting news is that a New York agent has just written asking for a full submission, a nice result from a cold query letter. At the very least it makes me feel better about writing query letters. I am stoked but I will come back too doped up to do anything with it today. Ah, the vicissitudes of existing are countless.

This is the second major piece of work involving an upper implant. One full job takes almost a year because it includes surgery to insert bone graft beneath sinuses, to thicken the natural bone so it can support an implant. This current job is just at that stage. My face is lopsided like a whacked out chipmunk's just now. Two weeks from now I get the stitches out. Two months after that the socket is implanted. Two months later, the tooth is fitted and screwed in.

So by Getaway you'll again look like whatever it was Dr. Frankenstein created instead of what you looked like after that free-for-all down in the bar near the USMCRD when you mentioned that Marines are just people who couldn't make the grade as sailors?

What tree may not the fig be gathered from? The grape may not be gathered from the birch? It's all you know the grape, or know the birch. As a girl gathered from the birch myself Equally with my weight in grapes, one autumn, I ought to know what tree the grape is fruit of. I was born, I suppose, like anyone, And grew to be a little boyish girl My brother could not always leave at home. But that beginning was wiped out in fear The day I swung suspended with the grapes, And was come after like Eurydice And brought down safely from the upper regions; And the life I live now's an extra life I can waste as I please on whom I please. So if you see me celebrate two birthdays, And give myself out of two different ages, One of them five years younger than I look-- One day my brother led me to a glade Where a white birch he knew of stood alone, Wearing a thin head-dress of pointed leaves, And heavy on her heavy hair behind, Against her neck, an ornament of grapes. Grapes, I knew grapes from having seen them last year. One bunch of them, and there began to be Bunches all round me growing in white birches, The way they grew round Leif the Lucky's German; Mostly as much beyond my lifted hands, though, As the moon used to seem when I was younger, And only freely to be had for climbing. My brother did the climbing; and at first Threw me down grapes to miss and scatter And have to hunt for in sweet fern and hardhack; Which gave him some time to himself to eat, But not so much, perhaps, as a boy needed. So then, to make me wholly self-supporting, He climbed still higher and bent the tree to earth And put it in my hands to pick my own grapes. "Here, take a tree-top, I'll get down another. Hold on with all your might when I let go." I said I had the tree. It wasn't true. The opposite was true. The tree had me. The minute it was left with me alone It caught me up as if I were the fish And it the fishpole. So I was translated To loud cries from my brother of "Let go! Don't you know anything, you girl? Let go!" But I, with something of the baby grip Acquired ancestrally in just such trees When wilder mothers than our wildest now Hung babies out on branches by the hands To dry or wash or tan, I don't know which, (You'll have to ask an evolutionist)-- I held on uncomplainingly for life. My brother tried to make me laugh to help me. "What are you doing up there in those grapes? Don't be afraid. A few of them won't hurt you. I mean, they won't pick you if you don't them." Much danger of my picking anything! By that time I was pretty well reduced To a philosophy of hang-and-let-hang. "Now you know how it feels," my brother said, "To be a bunch of fox-grapes, as they call them, That when it thinks it has escaped the fox By growing where it shouldn't--on a birch, Where a fox wouldn't think to look for it-- And if he looked and found it, couldn't reach it-- Just then come you and I to gather it. Only you have the advantage of the grapes In one way: you have one more stem to cling by, And promise more resistance to the picker." One by one I lost off my hat and shoes, And still I clung. I let my head fall back, And shut my eyes against the sun, my ears Against my brother's nonsense; "Drop," he said, "I'll catch you in my arms. It isn't far." (Stated in lengths of him it might not be.) "Drop or I'll shake the tree and shake you down." Grim silence on my part as I sank lower, My small wrists stretching till they showed the banjo strings. "Why, if she isn't serious about it! Hold tight awhile till I think what to do. I'll bend the tree down and let you down by it." I don't know much about the letting down; But once I felt ground with my stocking feet And the world came revolving back to me, I know I looked long at my curled-up fingers, Before I straightened them and brushed the bark off. My brother said: "Don't you weigh anything? Try to weigh something next time, so you won't Be run off with by birch trees into space." It wasn't my not weighing anything So much as my not knowing anything-- My brother had been nearer right before. I had not taken the first step in knowledge; I had not learned to let go with the hands, As still I have not learned to with the heart, And have no wish to with the heart--nor need, That I can see. The mind--is not the heart. I may yet live, as I know others live, To wish in vain to let go with the mind-- Of cares, at night, to sleep; but nothing tells me That I need learn to let go with the heart.

Rapparee has been cutting the grass and doing other chores prior to the guy coming tomorrow to dig up parts of the yards for landscaping. With luck and cooperation from the weather we'll have a very lovely backyard by the end of the week. Then Mom can sit on the back deck and sip iced tea while delighting in the roses, hydrangeas, bougainvillea, and other floral excitements (until Gluon runs amok in the gardens).

You don't fool me, Amos. I know that you are suffering acute distress over Chongo's low opinion of you. After all, he is a public figure of considerable note, and what are you? A brilliant conversationalist, yes...but beyond that? Hmmm? ;-D

Chongo says that he is sorry that your "face is lopsided like a whacked out chipmunk's" after your latest visit to "the dentist" (cough! cough!).

"Things gettin' rough in Tijuana?" he quipped.

Anyway, he says if you want, he is willing to do you the favor of punching you out a couple times on the other side of your face so that it will look properly balanced out.